3 ms·
"Most likely...The correlation between vast wealth accruing to a tiny elite and the ability of people to move between the rest of the rungs of the income ladder
by lostcolony 13y ago
"Most likely...The correlation between vast wealth accruing to a tiny elite and the ability of people to move between the rest of the rungs of the income ladder may be small—at least for now."
And there's the crux of the matter. Even if that correlation remains small, the top rung of that ladder is so far out of reach of everyone else, -and- incorporates an insanely disproportionate amount of money, power, and influence, that it will likely remain forever out of reach, while allowing for policies that markedly worsen the lives of those on lower rungs.
- kudos200 13y agoWhat proportion of the richest 1% (or 0.1%, or the top 1000 richest people) do you think came from families that were already in the top 1%? How do you define "out of reach"?
- kudos200 13y agoWell, I got curious and found an answer: "In 1982, 60 percent of the people on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans came from wealthy families, compared with 32 percent in 2011." http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/joshua-rauh-what-forbes-400-list-says-about-american-wealth http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/joshua-rauh-what-f...
- lostcolony 13y agoWhich speaks nothing of policy changes today, and what effect it will have on the future. Nor what disruption will come about to ensure that that trend continues (we are given no data points in that post other than those two, and we had both the PC revolution and the internet in between 1982 and 2011 to massively shake up entire industries). More to the point, it speaks nothing on how conditions for those not among the elite have changed in that time, and how they will change over time.
- testrun 13y agoWhich means that mobility increased.
- WalterBright 13y ago85% of American millionaires are self-made. Source: "The Millionaire Next Door"
- colomon 13y agoBut probably mostly not from the bottom quintile, which means this doesn't show up much in income mobility discussions.